Cover -- Contents -- Preface by Mark Ford -- Introduction -- ON WRITERS -- Blind Harry and Robert Baston -- Walter Scott -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson -- Anthony Trollope -- Matthew Arnold -- James Thomson ('B. V.') -- A. C. Swinburne -- Robert Bridges -- S. R. Crockett -- J. M. Barrie -- W. B. Yeats -- Laurence Binyon -- G. K. Chesterton -- John Buchan -- Edwin Muir -- 'In the Dorian Mood' -- Robert Graves -- Graham Greene -- Henry Green -- Gavin Ewart -- Philip Larkin -- Christopher Logue -- Harold Pinter -- Alasdair Gray -- Tony Harrison -- Ian Hamilton -- Seamus Heaney -- Douglas Dunn -- Julian Barnes -- James Kelman -- Peter Reading -- Christopher Reid -- Martin Amis -- Paul Muldoon -- John Burnside -- Michael Hofmann -- Irvine Welsh -- Douglas Galbraith -- 'Auld Acquaintances' -- 'I Belong To Glasgow' -- DIGRESSIONS -- Bottle Fatigue -- In Praise of Ugly Bugs -- Don't Fly Me -- On Cricket -- On Rugby -- The Road from Marrakesh -- The Legend of Iron Joss -- Away From It All -- INTERVIEW -- With Oxford Poetry -- Acknowledgments -- Index.